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Seeing that the EDA500 is discontinued and that we missed the firesale for the remaining stock, I'd like to know if it's possible to use any 5-bay esata expansion chassis with a port multiplier with the ReadyNAS 516? Has anyone tried it and had any success? Would I be able to create a new X-Raid volume with BTRFS support for the drives on that chassis?
Since Netgear seems to no longer be in the expansion chassis business, I hope they will not mind that I mention another company by name.
I connected a SansDigital TowerRAID TR5M+BNC to my RN516 that already has an EDU500 attached and the OS sees it as another EDA500 and it is in the process of XRAID syncing the 3 drives I installed. Once it completes, I'll add a fourth; but I have no reason to think that it won't behave exactly like an EDA500 since it thinks it is one. I have limited time for experimentation, as this unit is destined to another purpose, but I should have time for that
Don't let the "TowerRAID" name fool you, this is just an eSATA chassis with port expander. It is NOT a dual USB/eSATA device with some built-in RAID software, as are some devices in that product line, and which would certinaly behave differently. It also has 5 bays, like the EDA500. I cannot say how the NAS would treat a chassis with fewer bays (5 is max for eSATA port expansion). This is also not one of their "6G" models. I assumed that if the ReadyNAS had the 6G burst capability, the EDU500 would use it. Based on transfer speeds, it seems pretty clear it does not, so I went with the less expensive unit. I find it hard to believe that I just got lucky and this brand works where another wouldn't, but different port expander chips could cause a difference.
SansDigital makes some 4-bay units and 8-bay units that take 2 eSATA connections (like 2 4's stacked). It would be nice to know if they worked at all, even if they show a "phantom" 5th drive slot.
Overall construction is less flashy and feels a bit flimsier than the ReadyNAS line and the trays are definately a step down. But unless you plan to move it around a lot or change drives often, those won't really matter. Neither is likely to put up well with being dropped.
The slots are labeled backwards. Slot 1 is on the bottom. No big deal as long as you don't forget when you need to swap out a drive.
SansDigital is currently selling units directly on eBay for cheap (that's where I got mine), and they also have a refurb store on their web site. Regular price seems to be about $150, but I got mine for under $100, including shipping.
Since Netgear seems to no longer be in the expansion chassis business, I hope they will not mind that I mention another company by name.
I connected a SansDigital TowerRAID TR5M+BNC to my RN516 that already has an EDU500 attached and the OS sees it as another EDA500 and it is in the process of XRAID syncing the 3 drives I installed. Once it completes, I'll add a fourth; but I have no reason to think that it won't behave exactly like an EDA500 since it thinks it is one. I have limited time for experimentation, as this unit is destined to another purpose, but I should have time for that
Don't let the "TowerRAID" name fool you, this is just an eSATA chassis with port expander. It is NOT a dual USB/eSATA device with some built-in RAID software, as are some devices in that product line, and which would certinaly behave differently. It also has 5 bays, like the EDA500. I cannot say how the NAS would treat a chassis with fewer bays (5 is max for eSATA port expansion). This is also not one of their "6G" models. I assumed that if the ReadyNAS had the 6G burst capability, the EDU500 would use it. Based on transfer speeds, it seems pretty clear it does not, so I went with the less expensive unit. I find it hard to believe that I just got lucky and this brand works where another wouldn't, but different port expander chips could cause a difference.
SansDigital makes some 4-bay units and 8-bay units that take 2 eSATA connections (like 2 4's stacked). It would be nice to know if they worked at all, even if they show a "phantom" 5th drive slot.
Overall construction is less flashy and feels a bit flimsier than the ReadyNAS line and the trays are definately a step down. But unless you plan to move it around a lot or change drives often, those won't really matter. Neither is likely to put up well with being dropped.
The slots are labeled backwards. Slot 1 is on the bottom. No big deal as long as you don't forget when you need to swap out a drive.
SansDigital is currently selling units directly on eBay for cheap (that's where I got mine), and they also have a refurb store on their web site. Regular price seems to be about $150, but I got mine for under $100, including shipping.
Thank you so much for taking the time to test this solution. We had bought the RN516 with the EDA500 in mind for future growth. While we're disappointed that the EDA500 seems to be discontinued, we're glad that there is a way to expand on the RN516.
OK, I completed my testing and, as I expected, everything worked just like it was on a real EDA500 excpt for the reversal of bay numbering previusly mentioned.
I had a bit of a scare because the volume suddenly needed to re-sync for no apparent reason. But that turned out to be due to a bunch of command time-outs on one drive because the drives I was using for the tests were ones I retired from NASes because of increasing SMART errors (command time-outs on that one, re-allocated sectors on the others). With that one out of there, all is fine. And it shows that the NAS properly handles problematic drives in this expansion chassis.
